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WORLD NEWS 9
Wednesday 10 February
Irish deploy military-style checkpoints to suppress gang war
S. POGATCHNIK Christy Kinahan, the other Armed Gardai from the force’s Emergency Response Unit on patrol, as gang violence has resulted
Associated Press key figure in the under- in two murders in four days, in Dublin, Ireland, Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2016.
DUBLIN (AP) — Ireland’s world bloodletting.
police force deployed mili- In Friday’s attack, five gun- (Niall Carson/PA via AP)
tary-style road checkpoints men allegedly from the
Tuesday as the government Hutch camp targeted Ki- nahan drug traffickers. A million Catholics, rejected gangsters “to remind them
announced toughened nahan loyalists arriving at nephew, Gary Hutch, was some politicians’ calls Tues- they are not untouchable”
measures to try to prevent the hotel for the boxing gunned down in Spain in day to serve as mediator by tipping off police about
a gang war in Dublin from event. The gunmen, includ- September 2015 after re- between the Hutch and their activities.
claiming more lives. ing three armed with Ka- portedly rebuffing the de- Kinahan camps. He ap- “These are turf wars about
Justice Minister Frances lashnikov assault rifles and mands of Kinahan hench- pealed to the killers’ own pumping drugs into our
Fitzgerald said a 55-mem- disguised as an elite police men for a six-figure pay- partners, mothers and oth- children,” Martin said. “The
ber armed police unit unit, shot three men, killing ment. er loved ones to apply mor- danger of negotiating with
would be created for Dub- one, in front of scores of ci- Archbishop Diarmuid Mar- al pressure on them in the them is to give them status.
lin in hopes of suppressing vilians including young chil- tin, leader of Dublin’s 1 home and for neighbors of They are criminals.”q
what she called an “evil dren.
and sinister cycle of gang- The violence focuses on
land violence.” the international drug-traf-
The move is significant in a ficking business of Kinahan,
country where police typi- a Dubliner who following
cally patrol unarmed. It was prison sentences in Ireland
announced at an emer- and the Netherlands runs
gency meeting with police his empire from a villa in
chiefs following Monday Spain’s Costa del Sol. Po-
night’s killing of a brother lice in Ireland, Britain and
of Gerry “The Monk” Hutch, Spain opened a probe into
a gang chieftain credited his operations in 2008, the
with directing many of Ire- same year Kinahan jumped
land’s most famous bank bail in Belgium over money-
heists. laundering charges.
Taxi driver Eddie Hutch, 59, Since 2014, the Kinahan
was shot several times in cartel has been blamed
the hallway of his home. for killing a string of former
He was targeted in appar- members accused of pil-
ent retaliation for Friday’s fering vast sums from drug
gun attack on a boxing deals, and this has brought
weigh-in being attended him into collision with
by senior figures from a rival Hutch’s crew, who previ-
gang led by Irish fugitive ously cooperated with Ki-
